# Project docs

## [#](#unmet-needs)❓ Unmet needs

Customer success managers at the fictional company BrightMarket Analytics need a faster way to identify accounts at risk of churn before renewal conversations begin. Today they combine notes from support tickets, product usage exports, renewal dates, and call summaries by hand. This takes 2–3 hours per account review and means warning signs are often spotted only after the customer has already escalated.

Users expect to open one workspace and immediately understand which accounts need attention, why they are at risk, and what action is recommended next. Fixing this matters because earlier intervention should improve retention, reduce emergency escalations, and give customer-facing teams a shared view of account health.

## [#](#objectives)🏹 Objectives

* Launch an account health dashboard that highlights the top risk drivers for each strategic customer.
* Reduce manual account-review preparation time from 2–3 hours to under 30 minutes.
* Give customer success managers a recommended next action for at least 80% of high-risk accounts.
* Improve forecast confidence for Q3 renewals by making risk signals visible by Aug 14, 2026.

## [#](#user-personas)👥 User personas

**Primary persona:** Maya, Senior Customer Success Manager. Maya owns 35 enterprise accounts, prepares renewal plans monthly, and needs a clear, evidence-backed view of account risk before executive business reviews.

**Secondary personas:** Liam, Customer Success Director, who needs roll-up reporting for portfolio reviews; and Nora, Support Operations Lead, who needs to see which recurring support issues are affecting account health.

## [#](#jobs-we-want-to-cover)💪 Jobs we want to cover

* When I am preparing for a renewal or quarterly business review,
* I want to see a ranked list of risk signals, recent product usage changes, open support themes, and suggested actions,
* So I can prioritise outreach, prepare a focused customer conversation, and prevent avoidable churn.

## [#](#some-history)📜 Some history

In March 2026, the team piloted a spreadsheet-based health score for 20 enterprise accounts. It helped identify five renewal risks early, but it was difficult to keep updated and did not show the evidence behind each score. A later experiment added weekly email summaries, but CSMs reported that emails were too easy to miss and did not support deeper investigation.

The main learning was that account health needs to be visible in the workflow where CSMs already plan customer conversations, with enough detail to make the recommendation trustworthy.

## [#](#constraints)👀 Constraints

* Product usage data is refreshed every morning at 06:00 UK time, so the dashboard cannot support real-time usage alerts in the first release.
* Support ticket sentiment is available only for English-language tickets during the beta period.
* The work depends on the data platform team completing the account events pipeline by Jul 17, 2026.
* The first release must use existing CRM account permissions and must not expose commercial renewal values to support-only users.

## [#](#explorations-decisions)🗺 Explorations + Decisions

The team considered three approaches:

* **Weekly risk email:** fastest to build, but easy to ignore and weak for investigation.
* **CRM-only health field:** simple for account records, but too limited to explain what is driving the score.
* **Dedicated account health dashboard:** more effort, but gives CSMs a single place to review signals, evidence, and next actions.

**Decision:** build a dedicated dashboard embedded from the customer workspace, with a CRM summary field added later. This gives the team a useful workflow now while preserving a path to lightweight CRM visibility.

## [#](#releases)🗓️ Releases

The project will ship in three staged releases so customer-facing teams can validate the scoring model before it becomes part of renewal planning.

| **Release Name**                 | **Value it adds**                                                                      | **Scope**                                                                               | **Status**  | **Completed date** |
| -------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------- | ------------------ |
| Alpha: Risk Signal View          | Lets the CS leadership team validate health signals against known renewal risks.       | Top 50 enterprise accounts, usage trend, support volume, renewal date, manual notes.    | Done        | Jul 3, 2026        |
| Beta: CSM Action Dashboard       | Gives CSMs a daily prioritised account list with reasons and recommended next actions. | All enterprise accounts, risk driver explanation, suggested playbook, owner assignment. | In progress | Aug 14, 2026       |
| GA: Renewal Planning Integration | Adds dashboard insights to renewal planning and management reporting.                  | CRM summary field, director roll-up view, exportable renewal-risk report.               | To do       | Sep 18, 2026       |

## [#](#next-steps)👣 Next steps

* Confirm final risk-signal weighting with CS leadership Done
* Complete account events pipeline QA by Jul 17, 2026In progress
* Run beta training session with eight CSMs by Aug 7, 2026To do
* Review beta feedback and approve GA scope by Aug 28, 2026To do

## [#](#impact)📈 Impact

* Target reduction in account-review preparation time: from 2–3 hours to under 30 minutes per account.
* Target improvement in early churn-risk identification: 25% more high-risk renewals flagged at least 45 days before renewal.
* Adoption goal: 80% of enterprise CSMs use the dashboard weekly during the beta.
* Business goal: retain an additional £420,000 in annual recurring revenue across the Q3 renewal cohort.

## [#](#other-documents)🔗 Other documents

* [Account health research summary](https://example.com/account-health-research)
* [Customer success risk playbook](https://example.com/customer-success-playbook)
* [Account health dashboard prototype](https://example.com/dashboard-prototype)
* [Beta feedback form](https://example.com/beta-feedback-form)